James Gurney

This daily weblog by Dinotopia creator James Gurney is for illustrators, plein-air painters, sketchers, comic artists, animators, art students, and writers. You'll find practical studio tips, insights into the making of the Dinotopia books, and first-hand reports from art schools and museums.

CG Art

Contact

or by email:gurneyjourney (at) gmail.comSorry, I can't give personal art advice or portfolio reviews. If you can, it's best to ask art questions in the blog comments.

Permissions

All images and text are copyright 2015 James Gurney and/or their respective owners. Dinotopia is a registered trademark of James Gurney. For use of text or images in traditional print media or for any commercial licensing rights, please email me for permission.

However, you can quote images or text without asking permission on your educational or non-commercial blog, website, or Facebook page as long as you give me credit and provide a link back. Students and teachers can also quote images or text for their non-commercial school activity. It's also OK to do an artistic copy of my paintings as a study exercise without asking permission.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Every afternoon, my friends put a pile of sunflower seeds on their kitchen windowsill. Three different squirrels come to gorge. The one they call Meatball was just two feet away from me as he dined, and allowed me to sketch his portrait.

Meatball has beautiful little fingers, and he grabs the seeds one by one in his fists.

At my house I don’t leave out food for the squirrels, at least not intentionally. But they get into my bird feeder anyway.

They’re not the stupid rodents I first thought them to be. They can beat almost any bird feeder baffle that I can devise for them.

Have a look at the Kung Fu Squirrel on YouTube.

I wish I could understand the squirrel mind better. I feel a basic sympathy for a dog’s or a bird’s mental state and thought process.

But I have no idea what the squirrel is thinking. They seem to be driven by a mysterious combination of determination and paranoia...and now and then a fierce Killer Instinct.

12 comments:

I love the video, very funny. I understand why people hate squirrels but I for one love them. They are fun to watch. Where I live in Wisconsin I have seen white squirrels zipping about occasionally too.

It's good to take into account all the squirrel species. Flying squirrels have some of the most soulful eyes on the planet. And once, while canoeing in Algonquin, we saw a distant V-shaped wake heading towards us. Eventually we saw a red squirrel, swimming a quarter mile of open water between two rock islands. He was not to be confused with the water-skiing squirrel of youtube fame.

Haha, that's quite a vicious squirrel. Whenever I watch them, I always think their brains are receiving signals from seven different sources and they can only focus on one at any given time...hence the always fidgety, indecisive behavior I've seen in them.

I should be thankful the only squirrels I deal with are the grey squirrels we have down here in Atlanta...those red squirrels that live up north are freaking monsters! Like half-size cats practically.

I have a squirrel who has eaten a hole into a portion of my roof. This will be fixed soon.However my hound dog is on to him and every time this squirrel comes around he goes nuts, the dog that is.Then the cartoon starts. The squirrel then returns the abuse by barking back or whatever it is squirrels do when they get excited. He then moves up to the top of the roof to further torment Miles(the dog) and sometime throws things at him. Needles to say that until the squirrel tires of his amusement the dog is barking and jumping in a vain effort to get this bugger, the bane of his backyard territory.

I once had a squirrel stuck in my house for three days in which he was nearly broiled (my attempt to get him out from behind the stove) attacked by my dog incessantly, and attacked by my cats when I finally got him out of the house. I almost administered the coup de gras with the lawn mower, but stopped just in time!

I used to live in an attic apartment in Ohio, and every day around 11:30 AM there would be a huge thump at my window. Finally one day I was sitting in that dormer looking out the window when it happened, and lo and behold, it was a squirrel leaping from a nearby tree onto my windowsill to get onto the roof. They're crazy but they keep a strict schedule apparently.

I think in europa we don't have the same opinion about squirrels. Here they are not so common, you can see them in forest, never in town. I was surprised when some of Americans told me they are not beloved, like rats. Here we find them sympathic nice animals ^__^

Recently I was at the Grand Canyon with my five-year-old grandson and I had Mr Mouse, an approximately life-size furry mouse finger puppet, on my finger. We stopped to watch some squirrels, and I put Mr Mouse up and had him wiggle. One squirrel came up to him (he was ON MY FINGER, you recall), and examined him pretty thoroughly before going back to the business of begging for food and fighting with the other squirrels. Mr Mouse and I are glad the squirrels didn't get together and gang up on him like your friends did in the video.